Public Housing Rent Monitoring Passed 

The Highlands Residential Services Board passed a new policy Thursday designed to keep residents making too much money from living in public housing.

Tenants thought to be receiving income above the limit for public housing will be given a monitoring notice, according to Executive Director Dow Harris.

“They’ll have 24 months to be monitored, they can continue to pay the same rent, they can continue to be a public housing tenant,” Harris said. “At the end of the 24 months if they are still over income, then they can stay in public housing. We’re electing not to terminate their assistance, but they have to pay a market rent and they have to sign an alternative lease.”

Harris said that if a tenant’s income dips within public housing qualifications during monitoring, there will be no changes. The threshold for qualification is 80 percent of the intermediate income for the county of the tenant. Tenants whose income raises above qualification a second time will be granted a fresh 24-month consecutive monitoring period.

Director of Operations Chris Cassetty said the intention of the updated policy is to better provide public housing units to those who need them,  The updated policy change is in accordance with the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act passed in 2016.

“Probably four or five years ago now, but Congress got some wind there were people in public housing that were making a lot of money,” Cassetty said. “There were some news articles, people in New York City making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year living in public housing because again the rules are right now once you qualify and move in, your income can be unlimited.”

Harris said that though the act was back passed by Congress in 2016, it has not begun to be implemented by HUD until this year.